


every day we just go

by aceofdiamonds



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Hogwarts Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-12
Updated: 2014-11-12
Packaged: 2018-02-25 04:20:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2608271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aceofdiamonds/pseuds/aceofdiamonds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a late night conversation between parvati and seamus in the midst of the war</p>
            </blockquote>





	every day we just go

**Author's Note:**

> i want to write about parvati forever. also i can't remember whose idea it was to move to the room of requirement in seventh year, if it says at all, but i'm giving it to parvati here. do you see a pattern.

 

 

After another hour of tossing and turning Parvati sighs and pulls her curtains open, swinging her legs to the floor. The movement jars her ankle, not fully healed from last week's encounter with the Carrows, and she hisses in pain. She clenches her teeth as she lifts herself off the bed and over to the dormitory door, glancing as always at Hermione's empty bed, the curtains stiff with dust from disuse.

The fire's still on when she gets to the common room. It's dying but it's there. Parvati pauses at that, thinks about the fact that this war has made her find symbolism in everything. She shakes her head, the images of dying classmates and tortured children falling out for the moment. She needs to sleep.

The couch is occupied by a boy with tired eyes and a bruised face. Parvati remembers this boy as her loud, funny friend who never knew when to shut up. This boy used to blow things up by accident, always laughing and flirting and making the best of a bad situation. She misses the people they all once were, the students who weren’t prepared for battle every second of the day, their bodies hidden behind soft shells and hard eyes.  

"Couldn't sleep either?" Seamus asks, moving his legs so she can sit beside him. The couch feels much softer than her bed upstairs. She wriggles until she's touching it at every possible point, her fingers spread wide on the cushions. Seamus is watching her with an eyebrow raised, his mouth twisted into a semblance of a smile. "Comfy?"

"Merlin, my bed feels like a rock compared to this. I don't remember it always being like this."

"Small comforts, Parvati," Seamus says with a laugh. His eyes drop to her arm between them, catching the gash that curves along her forearm before she can shake her sleeve to hide it. "Fuck, Pav, who was that?"

She deflects by pointing at his black eye where the skin is mottled blue and yellow around the edges. It continues down his cheek to his neck and she can't see further down but she guesses the damage isn't limited to his face. "Oh, it's nothing. What about you? That's some shiner."

"I couldn't let Neville take all the credit," he says, attempts a wink and winces. He’s trying. "Parvati, please tell me you weren't provoking them --"

"So it's okay for you boys to do it but not me?" she demands. "Seamus, I am just as capable --"

"Hey I'm not saying you're not a good witch. But this isn't magic. This is physical brutality; I can tell you now that cut wasn't magically inflicted."

"It was Goyle," she sighs. She watches Seamus's hand clench into a fist, his jaw tight, and she knows she can handle herself just as well as he can she knows that this is some stupid noble thing but she appreciates the protective streak. It’s exhausting pretending to be okay all the time. “Leave it, Seamus.”

“They’re getting worse,” he says with gritted teeth, his eyes alight. This isn’t the boy from fourth year who blushed his way through inviting Lavender to the Ball while the two girls giggled into their hands. This is a boy rolling with what he’s been handed. “Carrow tried to use the Cruciatus on a first year yesterday --”

Parvati sits up straight. “You stopped them, didn’t you? Seamus, tell me --”

“How do you think I got this?” he says, gesturing at the cut she hadn’t seen on his neck. “Used me instead, didn’t she?”

It’s horrific that it’s gotten to the stage where Parvati feels something close to relief that it’s one of her best friends being tortured instead of a tiny first year who just wanted to come to this magical school and is instead living in fear. It washes over her then, everything they’ve been through, the lack of light at the end of the tunnel. More metaphors, more symbolism. Her head hurts.

“I miss Dean,” she says quietly then wishes she hadn’t when she feels Seamus tense beside her. He hasn't spoken much about it, none of them have, focusing on surviving day to day themselves, but now she’s pushed it out there she wants to hear Seamus talk about his best friend on the run, wants to comfort him. She can't imagine Lavender or Padma not being with her, even here in this place run by monsters and evil. “He’ll be okay, Seamus. I know he will.”

Seamus rubs a hand over his face, groans. “I know, too,” he agrees. He turns to look at her and he’s smiling a bit, his mouth tilted at one corner, the closest any of them get to it these days. “It’s weird being here without him. Feels like I'm missing me left arm.”

She picks up the arm in question, holding it like Dean might be touching his own too, miles and miles away. These are her best friends -- Lavender, Seamus, Neville, Dean. She might not have included the other three even last year but Gryffindors have to stick together. All the houses do; the Sorting Hat told them this years ago. Houses unite in face of danger.

Parvati turns her head to look out the window where the moon shines bright high in the sky. It's March now but it's impossible to tell, the weeks and months blurring together as one long dark day. Parvati feels blocked off in the castle, far from danger but far from news and information, too. The teachers try to tell them what they know in the few minutes they get alone away from The Others under the guise of homework help or distribution of House duties but even that isn’t much. No one has enough. "Do you think it's nearly over?"

"I don't know, Parvati," Seamus answers honestly. His arm falls around her shoulders and she leans into him automatically, desperate for some sense of comfort, some feeling of normalcy. "I hope so."

“I can’t believe this is our last year.”

“S’not going the way it’s meant to,” Seamus huffs a laugh. “Half of us gone, no Quidditch, fucking Snape making the rules.”

“I think we’re going to make it out of this,” Parvati says. “I think we can do it.”

“Give me some of your optimism,” Seamus says, arm tightening around her before he draws away. “If we make it to summer it’ll be a bloody miracle.”

Silence follows that, both of them too tired to speak, content to sit and watch the ash curl around the flames and drag them down. It’s almost completely dark now, shadows draped across every corner, stretching into the centre of the room. Parvati blinks sleepily, looking again when she thinks she sees something darting along the window before dismissing it as a mouse, nothing more.

Their common room feels like the safest place in castle at the moment but that's going to change soon, they're going to have to hide away in the room that taught them how to right two years ago, they're going to have to take the younger children there and tell them things will be okay in there even though they have no way of knowing that to be true. This place is full of memories -- over there is where Neville turned into a canary at the hands of Fred and George and their funny, trusting, faces. There is where Parvati told Lavender all about the kiss she got from the Beauxbatons boy and just across from where she’s sitting is where Dean kissed her that one time in fifth year. She associates this room with laughter and studying and her friends, not relying on the password protection for much more than a novelty before now. Now she relies on it with everything.

Parvati yawns, exhaustion finally hitting her. She gets to her feet, her hand reaching back to pull Seamus up. "Come on. Let's go to bed."

"Ah, I know there's a spare bed in your dorm but the stairs won't take me for a girl," Seamus says, laughing slightly when Parvati rolls her eyes. There's one empty bed in her's but there's three in the boy's, only Seamus and Neville's occupied. "See you in the morning, Parvati."

"Night, Seamus."

 

.

 

It would be easy to say that this made everything better, that Parvati woke up the next morning feeling refreshed and ready for what's coming, that the attacks at the hands of teachers aren’t as bad and kids aren’t trembling with fear in hidden alcoves between classes, but that's not how it works. What happens is that Seamus smiles at her at breakfast, his hand squeezing her shoulder before they go off their separate ways to their classes. He's not taking Divination at NEWT level but he’s in the rest of her classes. They’re both on duty tonight to patrol the corridors, a system introduced by Snape as another way of controlling them. McGonagall told Parvati that she’s grateful for it, anything to keep them a little safer, and that makes Parvati feel more confident in her abilities as a protector.

“You ready, Pav?” Lavender asks beside her, her hand on Parvati’s wrist. She’s more withdrawn than before, all the talk of boys and clothes filtered away. But she’s great with the younger ones, always ready with a story about this and that and a fix-up spell that does the trick. Parvati squeezes her hand quickly before leading the way out of the Great Hall into the Entrance Hall.

By lunch Hannah Abbott has been sent to the dungeons for defending a third year in Dark Arts and countless others are sporting cuts and bruises. They’re not going to be okay here. Not if their attempts at fighting back just send them spiralling. They’re going to have to be smarter if they want to make a difference.

It comes to her just after dinner as she’s struggling through her Transfiguration essay. Lavender looks up at her sharp intake of breath, her mouth open to ask what’s wrong, but Parvati gestures for her to stop then points at her parchment where she’s printed her idea.

“The Room of Requirement?” Lavender mouths. “100 points to Gryffindor, Miss Patil.”

It’s a tentative plan and it might come crashing down around them but it’s something and when Parvati slips into bed that night, idea received well by the rest of the seventh years, she sleeps for three hours straight.

 

 


End file.
